Suppen lugter af hvidløg.

In Danish, the definite article is usually attached to the end of the noun.

• suppe = soup
• suppen = the soup

So Suppen means the soup. This is very common in Danish:

• bog = book
• bogen = the book

Because Danish often uses a suffix instead of a separate article.

In English, you say the soup.
In Danish, you usually say suppen, where -en means the.

So the sentence structure is normal Danish:

• Suppen = the soup
• lugter = smells
• af hvidløg = of garlic / like garlic

Lugter is the present tense of at lugte, which means to smell.

• at lugte = to smell
• lugter = smells / is smelling

Danish verbs do not change depending on the subject the way English verbs sometimes do. So:

• jeg lugter
• du lugter
• han/hun lugter
• vi lugter

The verb stays lugter in the present tense for all persons.

In Danish, when you want to say that something smells like or of something, you usually use lugte af.

So:

• Suppen lugter af hvidløg = The soup smells of garlic / smells like garlic

The preposition af is part of the normal pattern here. It is not usually optional.

Compare:

• Det lugter af røg = It smells of smoke
• Hun lugter af parfume = She smells of perfume

Usually yes, but it is best to learn lugte af as a set expression.

Word-for-word, af often means of or from, but in this sentence the natural English translation is often smells like garlic or smells of garlic.

So it is better to think:

• lugte af = to smell of / to smell like

rather than translating af by itself too mechanically.

Because hvidløg is often treated like an uncountable substance here, similar to garlic in English.

In English, you normally say:

• It smells of garlic

not usually of a garlic.

The same idea applies in Danish:

• hvidløg = garlic

No article is needed in this sentence.

Here, hvidløg refers to garlic as a substance or ingredient, so number is not really the main point.

If you are talking about garlic in food, hvidløg often works like a mass noun:

• Der er hvidløg i suppen = There is garlic in the soup

If you want to talk about individual pieces, Danish often uses more specific words such as:

• et fed hvidløg = a clove of garlic

So in this sentence, hvidløg just means garlic in general.

Not necessarily. Lugte is often neutral and simply means to smell.

So:

• Suppen lugter af hvidløg can be neutral: the soup has a garlic smell.

If you want a clearly pleasant meaning, Danish may use dufte:

• Suppen dufter af hvidløg = The soup smells pleasantly of garlic

If you want a clearly unpleasant meaning, Danish may use stinke:

• Suppen stinker af hvidløg = The soup stinks of garlic

So lugter by itself is not automatically negative.

The sentence has the normal Danish main-clause order:

• Suppen = subject
• lugter = verb
• af hvidløg = prepositional phrase

So it follows the same basic pattern as English:

The soup + smells + of garlic

This is a very straightforward declarative sentence.

Because it is the first word of the sentence.

In Danish, nouns are not capitalized just because they are nouns. Only the first word of the sentence and proper names are capitalized.

So:

• Suppen lugter af hvidløg.

But in the middle of a sentence, it would be:

• Jeg tror, suppen lugter af hvidløg.

It can be tricky for English speakers.

A rough guide is:

• hvidløg ≈ vid-løy / við-løj depending on accent and how detailed you want to be

A few important points:

• The h in hvidløg is usually not strongly pronounced.
• The d in hvid is soft in standard Danish.
• The vowel in løg is not like English log; it is closer to a rounded vowel that English does not really have.

It is a good word to learn by listening rather than relying only on spelling.

Yes, but that changes the meaning.

• Suppen lugter af hvidløg = The soup smells of garlic
• Suppen smager af hvidløg = The soup tastes of garlic

So lugter is about smell, while smager is about taste. Both are common and useful, but they describe different senses.